When it came time to deciding which Apple laptop to get a few months ago, the choice was pretty clear to me: The 13-inch MacBook. While I had previously had a last-generation MacBook Pro, the new MacBooks built with the sleek unibody process (carved out of one piece of aluminum) offered more than enough power for what I needed, in a smaller package. I didn’t really see an advantage is paying more just to get a “Pro” model — and now Apple apparently doesn’t either.
Today at its WWDC event, Apple has decided to rename its 13-inch unibody MacBook line, to MacBook Pros. Alongside this it and the other MacBook Pros have gained some new features. The biggest of these is the new built-in lithium polymer battery which can last for up to 7 hours. That’s a 2 hour increase over the current battery life — a 40% increase. This battery features 5 years of recharges before it starts losing its charge. Normal laptops get 300 recharges, this one gets 1,000.
Another new feature is a built-in SD card slot. Also, the 13-inch MacBook gains a Firewire 800 port. These new MacBooks can have up to 8 GB of RAM and the 15-inch one can get up to a 3.06 GHz dual core chip — meaning its the fastest laptop Apple has ever made. The laptops can also feature 256 GB SSD drives, as Apple continues to phase out the regular hard drive.
The 15-inch models will now start at $1699 while the 13-inch ones will be $1199. The white plastic MacBook will retain the “MacBook name. Apple has also dropped the price of the MacBook Air at the entry level to $1499.
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